A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of collaborating with Mosiah Moonsammy, a director that I have known for sometime. We got together at the end of summer with the intent of creating small but constant content. Mosiah wrote, directed, and starred in this piece.

The project deals with that moment after you’ve started on your passion but before you’ve achieved anything. The struggle of being adjacent to your goals but not making any progress toward them.

The project had the new challenge of being set in Times Square, a place I avoided as a general rule. For how crazy it was the police were very accommodating and chill, kindly asking that we’d shoot handheld in the congested promenade.

And we had no issues working on a side street at all. Being able to move quickly as a small crew with portable kit.

The trailer for my last short film dropped yesterday. On a Cold Dark Night is Alex Mercado’s adaption of Faun No Tane by Masaaki Nakayama. Faun No Tane translates to Seeds of Anxiety in English.

When Alex approached me to shoot this when I was a bit adrift after a previous project. I was looking for something a lot more in line with my own tastes. Alex and I worked previously worked on Elans and have been friends for a number of years before that.

This short has been a passion project since our first conversation. I could tell Alex was trying to get this out since he read the Manga as a kid.

The film is in the homestretch of post production and I cannot wait for the opportunity to show it to everyone.

Honestly. I have been slacking off. After a few negative experiences on projects, I’ve been focusing on living my life a little and resetting on what I want to create. Focusing on smaller projects that will allow me to work on content closer to my personal interests.

I went on a trip to finally see California, something I have been looking forward to for 30 or so years. It was a short trip but a welcome break from a cold wet winter in New York. I got to visit a few places I have only dreamed I could see. Such as the Bradbury Building, a location made famous in Blade Runner, a seminal film in my life.

Going there remindeded me of what I wanted to get into in the first place. So much of that town has been shot that I would run into places that fit into a million fictional stories that just fit because the angle was right.

It was a great time personally as well as for perspective on craft. I got to see friends that moved out there and are killing it. spending some time with my fiancée seeing sights and enjoying the rest.

The trip was a great reset and I can’t wait to get back to focusing on what I want to create. The fantastic.

I went to see Phantom of the Opera for Valentines Day. It was first time seeing a show in the theater in over a decade. It was definitely the first I’ve seen since I started to pursue cinematography. I’m going to have to see many more professional shows just to see how much I can absorb from them.

I was Phantom once before and I loved the many, subtle changes to the play. The lighting design and style is more current and as well as a more traditional score, which was more synth heavy last time.

From the beginning the show applied specific color palates. The design and in the opening scene was so specific that I thought to myself “it’s almost like they color graded it.” The color palette was a lot more orange and teal now versus the bright blue 90s nighttime look employed last time.

The other take away I had was learning to enjoy theatrical lighting again. Many of the projects that I work on are so low budget that you are you are forced into a naturalistic approach. Getting time to be in a world where the lighting is entirely dictated by the drama was a real treat.

Its also interesting that there is an equivalent to shot sizes in the staging of a scene. Sometimes they would use only a portion of the stage and others they would use the whole thing to elevate the scale. Rooftop scenes overlooking the city or journeys into the phantoms layer in the underworld of the stage could take up the whole stage from side to side. Meanwhile small one room conversations can take up as little as a quarter of the stage, with use of spotlights guiding your attention. Half rooms constructed with doors could create simultaneous opposing drama in multiple locations.

I’m sure a lot of people reading this that go to theater regularly probably rolling their eyes at this post but it’s interesting to see the foundations of the rules film play out in front of you.

I’m currently shooting a short film with Alex Mercado. He’s a friend and a talented director. This is our first project together since the Supawave video, Left Shoe.

We’re adapting an exerpt from a manga he loves, ‘Fuan no tane’ into a short film. It’s a passion project and he’s been trying to adapt over the years. Seeing a ‘Man from La Mancha’ situation I jumped in to help him take down his white whale.

We decided to go with a cinematic 2:35 aspect and very formal camera work. We had conversations about inspirations for the look, drawing from Japanese horror, Fincher, and the source material.

The project has been a fantastic collaboration. The lead in the project is Will Hue, creator of the webseries ‘The Streets’. A Chinatown gang drama. EDIT: The Streets is being recut into a feature, which is going to be titled "Lucky Boys" and as such it is off youtube.

The other lead is Isaac Haldeman. Isaac is an actor, director/producer. His production company Helmset. His mission and content mirrors my own interests in terms of diversity and representation in film.

Jasmine Romero is our supporting actress. She’s an extremely accomplished and talented actor and singer. Her previous work includes Sesame Street and being on stage performing the Will Rogers Follies.

Many of the photos from this post come from Norman Lam. He’s been our ace in the hole in terms of crew. He’s been our set photographer, First AC, Sound guy, and Location manager. He’s a talented DP in his own right

The webseries I shot last year, Mistake, is hitting the web next month. There's a premier party and the first two episodes are being launched simultaneously as an extra bonus. Check it out with the link below.

As with any journey, making headway in doing what you you love is fraught with doubts. Along the way there are moments of even subtle despair. Moments when you don't know if you're good enough. I'm sure like anyone it come before the start of a project. A reflexive humbling, if you will.

I found this great little snippet from an interview with Anthony Dod Mantle DFF ASC BSC about starting out in the industry.

It's just a small pick me up for people who worry that they're not moving fast enough or that time has passed them by. Here's a man who has shot some great films, who started at 35, and is still making great work.

Just like the work week it is only just starting. Go, shoot, don't bit off more than you can chew. Forgive mistakes you've made. Keep on plugging.

Also if you are a shootwe and don't follow Cooke Optics TV, do that now. Their channel is a great source of inspiration and usually enough to get the wheels spinning. Never long winded and always fulfilling.

Recently I went out on a very cold day in January with my lovely fiancee to do a bit of test shooting in an effort to push around footage to create a series of Horror Film looks in DaVinci Resolve. While none of these a groundbreakingly interesting they do show how far you can push around a the SLOG3 files out of the Sony A6300.

The LOG file can be fairly jarring to look at untouched. I recently had a producer almost have a breakdown because I didn't adequately prepare them for the look of the raw footage. When you load up two days of shooting and everything is dark, grey, and noisy, it's a lot to take in. Especially when you've been looking at the internally corrected gamma on set.

In an attempt I tried a number of different methods to create an over all horror movie vibe. Each going with a different style, some inspired by great photographers others by moods.

The first look was inspired by some images I saw from Eduard Steichen, while I backed off how extreme that look is, the essence of the look is still there. His landscape work has an early dawn, loneliness which the cool greens definitely help inspire.

This second look was more of more of a faded photograph look. Much like old home photographs from the 70's or 80's after a few decades of fading.

This was much more of a contemporary Ring style look, cold and empty. This style most closely represents the weather we were filming in.

This last shot is attempting more of a ENR process with the pitch blacks and the blown out highlights. A slightly punchier Sepia look.

Each of these looks were just variations on a feeling I wanted to convey of foreboding or otherworldliness. I will put more up as I create it. This is my first real blog so I am going to try to be better that grotesquely sporadic about posting.

This is the trailer for Mistake Series. As cinematographer on this series on of my responsibility is the color grading. This video hows the sublte changes to a video to create the mood of the project. The trailer was graded in DaVinci Resolve from an H.264 file.

Behind the scenes

THis blog is insight on the projects as I shoot them.

I spend most of my time in talking to people about filmmaking and cinematography in general. I thought I could take this and bring it to the world as a whole to help inspire people to make great work. Having recently worked on a few larger projects and I hope to provide stories from the day. Perhaps some of the intent and inspiration as well. I am also going to use this as a way to shout out people I know that do amazing work. Hopefully people will also follow them as they do great things.